ACPA recognizes ‘Excellence in Concrete Pavement’

The American Concrete Pavement Association (ACPA) presented its 21st annual “Excellence in Concrete Pavement” awards, which recognize quality concrete pavements constructed in the United States and Canada, during the association’s closing banquet ceremony at the ACPA 47th Annual Meeting in Bonita Springs, Fla.

The awards program encourages high-quality workmanship in every concrete pavement project and serves as a forum for sharing information about highly successful projects. Projects are evaluated and voted on by judges from across the country and represent various stakeholder groups in the transportation-construction community.

The program recognizes contractors, engineers, and project owners who completed outstanding projects.

One of the requirements of the program is that projects must be completed in the calendar year prior to judging, which is why project descriptions show dates of 2009 or earlier.

The awards fall into 12 discrete categories applicable to construction and preservation of highways, roadways, airports, and industrial pavement facilities.

One change made to the program this year is the segmentation of the overlay category, with separate awards presented this year to concrete overlays used in highway, airport, and roadway facilities.

The new sub-categories reflect the increased use and, of course, the growing popularity of concrete overlays in pavement preservation projects.

The award winners include 22 ACPA contractor members, and were distributed geographically among 12 ACPA-affiliated Chapters and state paving associations.

In most, but not all cases, projects previously received awards presented by regional ACPA Chapters and state paving associations.

In all, 30 judges contributed many hours to judging the nominees this year.

ACPA presents awards in both gold and silver levels. Judging is based on a point system, with independent judges awarding points for quality construction, addressing unique and unusual challenges, innovation, traffic management, and other criteria.

In the case of ties, award judges present “co-winners.”

ACPA proudly presents the 21st annual “Excellence in Concrete Pavement” to the winners in the following categories:

This high-profile $69.6 million project at the Charlotte-Douglas International Airport was finished on time, within budget, and within specification.

In 18 months, Hi-Way Paving successfully completed the largest contract in the 41-year history of the company.

The project involved placing enough concrete to create a 6-inch by 5/8-inch ribbon around the world at the equator.

With no major incidents or problems reported, this massive project was really three projects in one. The First was new construction of the 9,000 ft x 150 ft Runway and taxiway system, along with electrical and lighting work.

The second major work item was the overnight taxiway tie-in work, which connected the new construction to the existing airfield.

The work began at 11 p.m. and carried a $72,000 per day liquidated damages for failure to open the active runway each morning by 6 a.m.

Finally, there was the management and construction of a new electrical vault building, which would house all necessary equipment for the lighting and electronics on the new runway and associated taxiway system.

McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas, Nev., needed to replace the deteriorating asphalt pavement on Runway 7R-25L, Taxiway ‘A’, five high speed Taxiways and two standard Taxiway connectors a total of 398,350 square yards of concrete pavement.

If you have been to Las Vegas chances are you landed on Runway 7R-25L, McCarran’s primary runway for landings. The challenge, replace the entire runway on the world’s sixth busiest airport, in total traffic movement, in five months. Complete it on time or pay $500,000.00 per day in liquidated damages. McCarran International Airport, owned by Clark County had adopted a no slipform paving policy years ago, but knew that in order to complete the project on time they needed to revise this policy. Clark County Construction Office officials toured other airports that were using slipform construction as their method of choice.

In spite of the challenges of a tight schedule, harsh weather, and other complexities, the project team—consisting of Clark County, Bechtel, Las Vegas Paving, Inc., Acme Concrete Paving, Inc., A-Core Concrete Cutting, Penhall Company, Royal Electric, and others—worked well together and completed the project 2-1/2 weeks ahead of schedule.

Concrete Pavement Restoration (CPR)

(GOLD) Runway 17L/35R and Associated Taxiways Rehabilitation,

Denver International Airport, Denver, Colo.

Contractor: Interstate Highway Construction, Inc.

Owner: City and County of Denver, Department of Aviation

Engineer: CH2M Hill

This $12.9 million project at Denver International Airport involved 100,463 square yards of pavement rehabilitation on one Runway and adjacent Taxiways.

With a 150 calendar day schedule (including a 90 day runway closure), the scheduling for this project was very challenging

In addition to the traditional processes of panel replacement, there were also many other things that added to the complexity of the project.

Just a few examples include more than 450 in-pavement lights with 8 miles of conduit; 1,030 square yards of Cement-treated base repair; 37,900 drilled and grouted dowel bars; and spall repairs around light cans.

The project also involved 3,500 feet of drainage pipe, 10 acres of seed and mulch, crushing of removed concrete, and 70,000 square yards of pavement grooving.

At the peak period of construction, more than 300 people were working on the runway closure.

Seventy-two panels were added after the start of construction, but the work was still completed within the 90-day closure.

Thanks to the hard work and extra effort of everyone involved, D.I.A. has a restored facility that will provide many more years of service.

(SILVER) U.S. Hwy. 166/169 K-LINK 1R Resurfacing, Coffeyville, Kansas

Contractor: Bryant & Bryant Construction, Inc.

Owner: City of Coffeyville, Kans.

Engineer: Allgeier, Martin and Associates, Inc.

The K-LINK resurfacing projects were because they used a slightly different design methodology to establish smaller and more site-specific pavement repairs. This helped maximize the quantity of pavement repairs within the budget parameters.

After the bid opening, it was calculated that the project could be extended another 1,100 feet and remain within the original budgetary parameters. Since the original project limits could not be extended under the resurfacing program guidelines, it was necessary to create a second project number, which had to be designed and bid immediately.

Because the projects were back-to-back, the design time was accelerated using the previously established methodology so that these two projects could be worked under one traffic management plan.

This innovative approach and the quality efforts of everyone involved saved money and brought the project in on time.

Thanks to the creativity and commitment of everyone involved, this very important highway is sure to provide many years of service to motorists.

County Roads

(GOLD) Garfield Avenue, Sioux City, Iowa

Contractor: Cedar Valley Corp.

Owner: Sioux City, Iowa

Engineer: Sioux City, Iowa

High-quality farm-to-market roads very important to the agricultural interests in the state of Iowa … and Sioux County’s Garfield Avenue were no exception.

Cedar Valley Corp. paved 5.00 miles of 8-inch concrete paving. The project involved regrading and paving of an existing gravel county road. After the existing road was reworked to obtain the specified two percent cross slope, 4 inches of a virgin rock base was placed prior to the paving operation.

A considerable amount of shoulder-grading was also performed to correct the existing foreslopes to bring them up to the current standards. The 22-foot wide paving was a variable depth design of 9 inches on the outside edge and 8 inches at centerline.This design method is used in Iowa to counteract the outside point loads applied by farmers’ grain wagons.

The project also specified contraction dowel baskets be placed on twenty-foot centers. Two items that make this project stand out above others are the outstanding quality of the finished product, and the exceptional job Cedar Valley Corporation did to maintain access to local property and business owners.

C.V.C. also paved 10 lane miles with an average smoothness of 1.44 inches per mile using a 2/10-inch blanking band. In spite of the challenges, this project was finished in only 53 working days.

(SILVER) STP-137C(066)CI, Okarche Bypass, Kingfisher, Okla.

Contractor: Duit Construction Co., Inc.

Owner: Oklahoma Department of Transportation

Engineer: Russell Engineering, Inc.

Okarche Bypass located in Okarche, Okla., is locally famous for fried chicken. It is also known locally for the first County Commissioner to pave a county road with concrete. The imprints on the existing box structures show that this road was originally built in 1942.

This reconstruction project was bid as an alternate bid to asphalt. With 12 potential and nine actual bids submitted, four were for concrete pavements and five were for asphalt pavement. Concrete came in as the lowest on initial cost.

As work began, it was clear to see two major challenges, including the unusual roadway design and a requirement to make a new crowned roadway (where previously there were virtually no crowns).

The engineer had anticipated that the contractor would need at least a month to close the road and detour traffic around the construction zone, but this ended up not being the case because Duit completed the entire five miles of paving in less than a week. This required saw cutting within a very tight window, and because of that, Duit maintained a force of at least eight saws to keep up with paving operations.

Neither of the challenges of this project were a match for the hard work, ingenuity, and dedication of the team.

In spite of a short paving season and harsh, unpredictable weather, the contractor finished this desert paving project with no lost-time accidents. Traffic control and handling were also concerns in this area because of vacation travel to the Sierra Nevada resort areas, as well as the constant number of trucks hauling freight along I-80 to cross the mountain range in both directions.

Even so, the contractor finished the project with no significant problems, thanks to teamwork and collaborating with Caltrans.

On the final monthly partnering survey for the project, the Resident Engineer, responding to a question about ‘overall satisfaction,’ commented that this was the “best overall job on the I-80 corridor.”